With renewed optimism of a US Federal Reserve interest rate cut, Wall Street will begin a holiday-shortened week on Tuesday with eyes turned toward a labor market report.
The major indices ended relatively flat after a week of volatile trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.16 percent from the prior week to finish at 13,357.74 points on Friday while the tech-rich NASDAQ rose 0.76 percent to 2,596.36 points. The broad market Standard & Poor's 500 index ended 0.36 percent lower than a week ago, at 1,473.99 points.
Bonds gained on the market turbulence. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond fell to 4.537 percent on Friday from 4.633 percent a week earlier, and that on the 30-year Treasury dropped to 4.831 percent from 4.897 percent. Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions.
The market continued weeks of turbulence due to a credit crunch that originated in the high-risk subprime mortgage sector, where lenders offer home loans to people with shaky credit.
Investors are worrying about the unknown extent of the economic damage from the credit fallout. Foreclosures are rising as some home owners, particularly those with adjustable-rate mortgages, find they cannot make their payments as interest rates climb.
Counting on the Federal Reserve to ease monetary policy and soothe the markets, investors finally were reassured on Friday by a speech by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and measures to help distressed homeowners unveiled by US President George W. Bush.
"The [Fed] continues to monitor the situation and will act as needed to limit the adverse effects on the broader economy that may arise from the disruptions in financial markets," Bernanke said in his first public remarks since the mortgage-related credit crunch roiled markets around the world early last month.
Bernanke's speech, to a Fed symposium in Wyoming, "was the minimum the market wanted to hear," said Marc Pado, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald.
The speech "wasn't exciting, but it was reassuring," he said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last